It didn't take them too long to catch up with the Hyuga, but he was in bad shape. Several odd looking, golden daggers stuck out of his back, and he was bleeding from a few other cuts. Myriads of the same daggers littered the forest floor as well as two giant arrows of the same material. Judging by the almost fist sized hole in his left shoulder one of them had also apparently hit Neji at some point. His hair tie had been destroyed too it seemed and his hitai-ate, ripped and bloody, lay on the ground.
Haruka could sense another chakra signature somewhere close by, and pointed Sai in that direction while she headed for Neji. She barely even saw the projectile, another arrow, in time to form a chakra barrier and deflect it's path. It was a good thing she'd stood at an angle because the barrier shattered even with the lessened impact. The giant arrow missed them by only a few centimeters, creating another crater as it hit the ground.
"We need to stop meeting like this Hyuga," Haruka quipped. "The people shooting pointy things at you get stronger every time and I'm not sure how long I'll be able too keep up."
A choked laugh escaped his mouth together with a trickle of blood, but then he smiled and gripped onto the string attached to the arrow's shaft. His chakra flared for a moment, and then he pulled. Haruka started running before he could get any stupid ideas, homing in on the stranger's chakra signature. Sai was right behind the Sound nin, and they hit him at almost the same time. Her wakizashi slashed through the torso, while his tanto cut off the head.
This guy wore the same clothing as the other one and his skin color was a similar shade as well, but his hair was a light gray, his horns were longer, a third eye sat in the middle of his forehead and he had six arms. The pattern of his curse seal was a mess of swirly lines, and as they receded his hair turned black and grew shorter, his skin became a more human looking shade of brown and the horns vanished. The six arms and extra eye, however, did not.
"Jubei sew up his shoulder please and then catch up with us," Haruka said, vaguely gesturing in Neji's direction. The tanuki almost immediately transformed back into his furry self and went to work. "Hyuga, if you think you're able to, go back the way you came. Choji is where you left him, but he might need help getting home."
"We need to go after—" He started, but she didn't let him finish.
"We," she told him with emphasis, pointing towards herself and Sai, "are going after them. You on the other hand are in no shape to continue, and I don't want to find out what happens if Hinata gets angry with me for letting you die like some heroic idiot, so move your ass back towards the village!"
She didn't wait for an answer, merely motioned for Sai to continue. The Oto nin were incredibly strong, especially with those massive chakra boosts the seals seemed to give them. Considering he was a jinchuriki and had that fancy new technique, Naruto would probably be able to handle one on his own, but Shikamaru and Kiba were more likely to end up like the other two members of their squad.
Haruka's head whipped to the side only minutes after they had left Neji, but she didn't stop running.
"Remember our friends from Suna?" She asked. "They're headed this way, from the village it seems."
Sai didn't answer. He might have accepted her decision to let Gaara live, but he wasn't happy with it. Haruka hadn't thought she'd find out whether or not it was a mistake this soon, and she really hoped that it wasn't. If Suna was in league with Oto again they would most likely all end up dead. They could barely fight the Sound nin as it was. Then again, the direction the Sand team was coming from suggested that they had been in Konoha, which meant they could be friendly back up.
"Kiba is below us and to the right, likely went down the cliff and into the river. He isn't fighting right now, but his chakra is really low and one of the Sound guys is close by. Shikamaru is up ahead, facing of with another one," she informed Sai. He just glanced at her, waiting for orders. It was creepy and they really needed to talk about that, again, but not now. "I'll go after Shikamaru, his opponent has coated the area in chakra, which probably means genjutsu. Are you fine going after Kiba?"
A nod, and then he was gone. The blank facial expression was unnerving. Haruka had kind of hoped his earlier annoyance with her meant he'd opened up more. It was really hard to hold back with the orders when he just did whatever she told him to, and she really shouldn't be giving any orders to anybody. She had a hard enough time keeping herself alive most of the time, and that was with her better healing and resistance to poisons as well as genjutsu. Not to mention the fact that she'd been incredibly lucky so far.
Ibiki or the Hokage could have had her imprisoned or executed after she'd been freed from Orochimaru. Zabuza could have decided to kill her in Wave, when Kakashi was out cold. Orochimaru himself had had the option in the Forest of Death. Then there was Gaara who had turned several people into mangled corpses or a mist of blood in her presence, without anyone else there to interfere. Itachi, who could have, at the very least, put her in a coma like he did with her sensei and teammate. And of course Danzo. If the man had given Sai the order to take her out sooner, she had no doubt the boy would have gone through with it. Friendship was a new concept to him, at least as far as she knew. There was no telling at what point it had started to weigh heavier than obedience.